Melrose Industries' return of £600m to its shareholders was signalled months ago, but it is still worth noting quite how much value has flowed from the 2008 purchase of diversified engineer FKI for a shade under £1bn.

FKI, back in the day, had good years and bad years but was never a basket-base. Melrose, though, has been able to harvest gold, selling five FKI businesses last year for a total of £945m while retaining, for the time being, two units that comprised half the value of the original deal.

Add it all up, take into account the 50/50 debt/equity financing, and Melrose has trebled its money on the parts of FKI it has sold. It can look forward to a similar result when the two remaining businesses depart. They are Bridon, a maker of heavy-duty wire rope for oil rigs, and Brush, a manufacturer of generators for power stations.

Financial engineering? Far from it. As Melrose always points out, the middle part of its "buy, improve, sell" mantra involves investment, which doesn't allow adventurous games of leverage to be played with balance sheets. Ideal targets for purchase are both undermanaged and underinvested. That's the base from which Melrose aims to increase profit margins by five or six percentage points.

The list of manufacturing and engineering companies that fit the bill is probably short. All the same, it's odd that Melrose's success (and that of Wassall, the founders' previous outing) hasn't spawned imitators. The private equity field is crowded. Melrose, with its lower-risk, higher-investment model, seems to have the pitch to itself.